£72 Million Anaerobic Digestion Plant To Be Built In Leeds

Yorkshire Water has been given the go ahead to build a £72 million sludge treatment and anaerobic digestion facility in the centre of Leeds.

Earlier this week, it revealed that Leeds City Council granted planning permission for the bio-energy site.

The state-of-the-art plant will be at Knostrop wastewater treatment works on Knowsthorpe Lane, which has been used to handle domestic and industry sewage for nearly a century.

Director of asset management at Yorkshire Water Nevil Muncaster said: “[This plant] will not only provide increased treatment capacity for our sludges but will also deliver significant cost savings enabling us to keep customer bills as low as possible.”

He added that bolstering the sludge and bio-solid treatment capacity at Knostrop will reduce carbon emissions by 15 per cent across the company, supply more than half of the energy needs for the plant, and help achieve the recycling of 94 per cent of the region’s sludge by 2020.

The new facility will be installed in place of the current sludge and bio-solid incinerator, which was fitted 23 years ago, providing more effective treatment of sewage and supplying renewable power from the waste water overflow.

Nottinghamshire will also see a new anaerobic digestion plant, with the new works being built at Stud Farm in Rufford. It intends to use straw, poultry litter and feedstock from local farms to provide heat and electricity to businesses.

As the site is expected to generate 16,300MWh of renewable electricity every year, it will be used to power as many as 4,000 houses.

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